


with the sour, the sweet

by icarusandtheson



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Established Relationship, Family Dynamics, M/M, Witch!Alex, magic!alex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:27:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25652848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarusandtheson/pseuds/icarusandtheson
Summary: On an overcast New York day, Alex reflects on what he lost and what he has now.
Relationships: Alexander Hamilton & Original Child Character(s), Alexander Hamilton/George Washington, George Washington & Original Child Character(s)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 21





	with the sour, the sweet

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [spilled salt over the shoulder](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12239241) by [icarusandtheson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarusandtheson/pseuds/icarusandtheson). 



> for those of you who have been around for a while: consider this a continuation of the "spilled salt over the shoulder" universe, some years down the line.

The world outside their windows is a flat slate-gray, asphalt and sky and buildings blurred together, monochromatic. Alex wants to crawl back under the covers where the darkness at least makes sense, wants to pull warmth off of George’s body and weave it into something he can wrap himself in, a blanket or a second skin. 

Lawrence wants hot chocolate, which means George is out of Alex’s reach, working through the recipe he’s perfected over the years with an attentiveness Alex can usually only muster for spellwork.

And not even for that, right now. On the windowsill, Alex’s plants are curled in on themselves like small, brittle fists. He’s got an old notebook open in front of him, more of a token effort than anything -- this has never been a strength of his. He’s only passable at making things grow, and the sustaining trips him up every time. 

The exception that proves the rule leans back against the kitchen counter and lifts a brow. “Have you tried asking them nicely?” Lawrence asks. 

“I don’t think I have anything to say that they want to hear right now,” Alex mutters. It’s the kind of day that leaches something from the body and breeds regret at choosing to put down roots. The rosemary and all its friends took the path of least resistance and he empathizes, which means he can’t find a convincing enough argument to coax them back to health. 

He flips a page, irritated with the plants for giving up, irritated with himself for not being able to fix it, for being in this frozen hellscape of a city in the first place. He feels the air shift, that significant, weighted silence that means two-thirds of his family is sharing a look over his head. “Stop that.” 

“I’m not doing anything,” Lawrence says. “Was I doing something?”

“I’m fine.”

“Great. Glad to hear it.” Muffled footsteps across the kitchen tile, then a familiar warm weight pressed against his side. “Can I look?”

Alex waves his hand,  _ go ahead  _ or  _ get this out of my face.  _ Permission either way, and Lawrence drops into the chair next to him. 

Lawrence reaches for it without hesitation, and it’s somehow still a surprise, that ease. George always pauses, even after years of knowing, like he doesn’t carry the best parts of Alex’s power around tucked safe behind his ribcage, threaded through his lifelines. That’s respect, Alex knows, the brief moment it takes to confirm trust, willingness for Alex to share what’s his. Lawrence has had the right to all Alex is from the moment he was born, and knows it, so: Lawrence grabs the book. 

It feels -- fine, mostly. It feels like Alex is holding it in his own hands. 

“Are you ever going to finish these?” Lawrence asks. 

“They’re mostly scraps,” he says, and recognizes the non-answer for what it is, recognizes that their son deserves better. “I don’t know how.” 

Lawrence traces his fingers over the pages, over the deep grooves Alex’s pen left in the paper, the strokes uneven and hasty. Double-vision, Lawrence’s hand and Alex’s hand, years ago.

“This is a different book.” It’s not a realization, really -- more like something Lawrence noticed when he walked into the room, something he’s been waiting to bring up at the right time. George shifts, barely a movement at all, but Alex knows he’s listening with the same patient curiosity he passed on to their son. Another day he might laugh, roll his eyes at it -- today he’s just achingly grateful for what they share, relieved. 

“Yeah.” Alex thinks about leaving it at that, but: “The first one, actually.” Lawrence glances up at him, and Alex tries to keep his face open, still. “Parts of spells I remember, or particular outcomes. I’ve pieced it together, once or twice, but most of them I can’t.”

“Remember from when?” Lawrence asks. “I thought you wrote down everything.”

Alex only realizes he’s reaching -- or his power is, if there’s a distinction to be made, if the semantics of it even matter -- for George when he finds him: whatever he is bumping up against whatever George is, something cold and weary reaching for warmth, peace. George stills at the stove and glances over his shoulder, his hand reaching to switch off the burner. 

“It’s fine,” Alex says, and means it both as reassurance and a request to -- to stay there, just away enough to bear, so Alex can answer his son’s questions. He’ll curl up with his husband later, grieve his many griefs again like he has so many times, but if George comes to him now he won’t be able to get the words out.

George turns his attention back -- he hums something under his breath, just barely audible. An echo of earlier, when the gray sat so heavy in Alex’s bones that he couldn’t get out of their bed. George’s hand pressed against Alex’s stomach, rubbing circles, a vaguely familiar melody in Alex’s ear. Alex feels the reverberations of it in his head, at his back like George is still pressed behind him, and he settles a little in his chair.

“This is everything I remembered from what my mother practiced,” Alex says. “I don’t -- some of them she only used once, or when I was small.” His gaze lingers on a handful of desperate ink smudges, riddled with scratched-out attempts and half-words. He redirects, focuses on his son’s face. He traces the familiar curves and planes of it with his eyes, notes the new angles where baby fat is melting away. His baby. His best thing, the greatest magic trick he ever pulled. A familiar desperation rises at the back of his throat: he needs more time, he needs Lawrence small in his arms again, perfectly sized to tuck away from the world. But that’s a grief for another time, he can’t carry it right now. 

“She didn’t write them down,” Lawrence says, not really a question. There’s a gentle kind of understanding in his expression that Alex almost can’t bear to look at. 

For a moment, Alex aches down to the marrow of him. He pulls a breath and lets it go, lets it all go. It’s cold, that’s all. It’s cold, and Alex misses the sun. 

“No,” he says. “She never -- that’s it.” 

“Okay,” Lawrence says, and the word is softer than it has any right to be. His brow furrows in that vaguely worried way that’s all his father, and there’s a hanging pause where Alex thinks he might apologize, dreads it. This is Lawrence’s history, he has a right to it -- if only Alex could get his mouth around it without choking. 

The milk starts to bubble furiously. Alex can hear it spitting and foaming over in its hurry to escape. George turns the heat down on the stove, which of course changes nothing. 

Alex wants to say  _ you remind me of her when you laugh  _ but he’s not sure how to make it sound more than just tragic. It wouldn’t change anything, wouldn’t give Lawrence memories he doesn’t have. 

Lawrence shuts the book carefully and nudges it back towards Alex’s hands. Alex’s fingers twitch on the tabletop; he flattens his hands against the surface. “You can look at it,” Alex says. “It’s okay.”

Lawrence’s brows rise, faintly skeptical, and he darts a look over to George like he thinks Alex won’t notice. George doesn’t say anything at all -- an incline of the head, maybe. Whatever Lawrence reads seems to satisfy him; he sets the book out between them and flips it open to a random page. The ink is a different color a third of the way through; somewhere, years ago, a young Alexander is desperately searching for another pen before he loses the threads so carefully held in his memory. 

Alex shifts his hand a little left, fingertips brushing the worn pages. He breathes. A big, bright kitchen. The smell of warming milk and sugar. A family within reach. He’ll keep repeating it until it filters in, until he can remind that hurt child curled up behind his ribcage that it’s okay, that it’s been okay for a long time. 

“Maybe we can go through it together,” Lawrence says, flipping the page. The curiosity in his voice is a bright spot in Alex’s chest, and Alex feels his power rouse and reach for it -- curious too, now, almost child-like with it. “See if we can find anything you might have missed.”

From anyone else Alex might be offended at the implication -- Lawrence, though, he trusts to catch what he overlooks. George’s eyes in his face, in more ways than one. 

“We can do that,” Alex says, and the quick, bright grin that tugs on Lawrence’s mouth is so sweet it stings. An unexpected glance in the most perfect mirror. 

His, too. He never forgets it, but it’s a gift he’ll never be able to understand completely. 

“Failing that,” George says, pulling two mugs out of the kitchen cabinet, “there’s always store-bought.” 

Alex scoffs. “Soulless,” he complains, and then tenses just slightly as George pours out the chocolate, boiling hot. Something small and cool and quick to ease a burn prickles at his fingertips. Of course George doesn’t spill a drop anywhere, of course he has just enough to fill both mugs just shy of too much. Alex flexes his hand and the thing too small to be called a spell, more of a wish with meat on it, dissipates. 

“Then we can ask Martha for some cuttings the next time we visit,” George says. And just like that, it’s settled -- Alex will have his plants one way or another, and if he can’t piece together his mother’s lost magics, it’s not the end of anything. He hasn’t lost anything. 

“Yeah,” Alex says, slow. “That’ll work.” George sets a mug each in front of him and Lawrence. Alex lifts a brow at his husband. “I didn’t ask for any.”

“No, but you wanted it. Careful, it’s hot.” 

He’s not wrong, and the quiet knowing of it lights in Alex’s belly like a match. Small and warm, enough to chase the shadows back to the corners. He breathes in the steam, rich and sweet, lets it linger at the back of his throat. “Thank you,” he says, knowing George will understand it in its entirety. 

George rests a hand on the back of his neck, strokes over Alex’s nape with his thumb. “Any time.”

He doesn’t pull away, his hand sure and heavy in the best way. Alex leans back into the touch and blinks, slow and sleepy. He considers his mug, then Lawrence’s. He snorts. “Did you count out the same number of marshmallows?”

“I aimed for roughly the same amount to avoid any hurt feelings,” George says, and Alex can hear the smile, the warm amusement.

“You’re ridiculous,” Alex says, and takes a sip. Scalds himself, because he never did learn to listen to what was good for him. He winces.

George sighs, says, “Baby,” all long-suffering and sympathy. 

Alex sets the mug down. Nothing sparks at his fingertips -- he reaches for George’s wrist instead, twists his head around to press his lips to George’s palm. The hot pulse of a setting-in burn fades, lost in the heat of George’s skin on his; Alex presses another kiss there, for good measure or because he wants to or both. George makes a low noise at the back of his throat, and Alex smiles into his skin. Then he lets him go, and gestures for Lawrence to pass him his mug. “Let me cool it down for you.” 

Lawrence sighs, all long-suffering, and pushes his mug over.

\-------------------------------

They end up on the couch in what passes for their usual configuration ever since Lawrence got too big to fit comfortably on their laps: Lawrence squeezed in between the two of them, a blanket that was ostensibly meant for all three of them mainly bunched up around Alex and Lawrence’s legs as they sip their drinks. Of course it tastes perfect, trickles down to warm some of Alex’s wilting places.

They go over what little Alex has about the care and keeping of things -- at least in this book, the volumes he filled after Lawrence was born take up their own shelf. Alex isn’t surprised at the scarcity; the boy who filled these pages never thought he’d live long enough to make anything grow. Alex’s little windowsill garden would have been beyond him -- Alex’s little boy, curled up between him and the man he chose for himself, the man who he chose to grow something with… it would have been a joke. A home. A name, and someone who wanted him to have it, was  _ proud  _ for him to have it. Twelve-year-old Alexander would have laughed in his face, jagged and angry at the cruelty of it. 

“I’m guessing you had other priorities,” Lawrence says, and something about the matter-of-fact understanding of it makes Alex’s throat ache to close up. Somewhere the jagged angry edges of that other little boy smooth over, just a little, at being so clearly seen. 

Alex rests his head back against the couch, sighs. “Yeah.” How to heal big and small hurts, how to make a little food stretch a longer way, how to keep going when there was nothing left to give or will to give it. Things he won’t tell Lawrence about until he’s older, and things he’s already started teaching him -- slowly, so he doesn’t scare him. Just in case. Lawrence has a whole family to fall back on, but Alex will leave him what he can, too. Everything he can. “We’ll go over the rest of it soon. Think we gotta call time of death on the plants, though.”

“Give them a little more time,” George says. “They might still surprise you.”

Alex grunts, skeptical. He blinks slowly against the light, turns his head a little to get away from it. He closes his eyes. Fingers brush against his, a gentle tug to get the hot chocolate out of his hand. “I’m not finished,” Alex says, mostly just to be difficult. He lets go anyway. 

“I’ll warm it up on the stove later,” George says, like he hasn’t been married to a witch since time immemorial. It tastes better when George goes about it the long way around, though, and he probably knows that without Alex having to tell him. “Sleep, you had a hard night.” 

Alex’s brow furrows at the memory. Light pressure there, where the skin is bunched, and then moving slowly down to the tip of his nose. The motion repeats again and again, and something catches in Alex’s throat, wet. Whatever he is reaches out, trembling. Whatever George is meets him easily, and George’s hand settles against the back of his head. 

Lawrence shifts closer, his curls brushing against Alex’s cheek. “Good dreams,” he says, soft and full of intention, and when he touches the space between Alex’s brows this time, it’s smooth.

Alex sleeps. 

_ Dark, warm. The smell of strong coffee and sea spray.  _

_ “What are you doing?” Alexander asks. He’s fallen asleep like this more times than he can count, but he’s never thought to ask why. A finger pauses on the bridge of his nose, a huff of laughter in the dark.  _

_ “Making good dreams,” his mother says into his hair. He knows the laugh lines around her eyes are showing, like she’s telling a joke, but he doesn’t think she is. Then quiet, then nothing but the sound of her breathing and her curls brushing his forehead.  _

He wakes up warm. Someone dimmed the living room lights, and outside the world is dark. He can feel Lawrence breathing -- beside him, inside of him, too, an echo in his own lungs. Steady, but not sleep-steady, yet. George he feels everywhere, safe harbor to curl into. He lolls his head to the side, feels George’s fingers shift in his hair. 

“Welcome back,” George says. 

Lawrence looks up, his face mashed against Alex’s shoulder. “Hi.”

“Hi.” 

“Did it work?” Lawrence asks.

Alex exhales, slow. “Yeah,” he says. “Thank you.”

Lawrence grins, makes a soft, happy noise at the kiss Alex presses into his curls. Alex can feel George watching them, can feel the weight of all that ache and gratitude. When he meets his husband’s gaze, it hurts as much as he expected it to, even with the low light.  _ Look what we made.  _ But he doesn’t have to say it -- they both haven’t been able to stop looking since the moment he was here.  _ Thank you,  _ then. Again and again and again until it filters in, until George knows how much he means it, how much he always means it. 

He stretches his legs out, realizes the notebook is still on his lap. He rests a hand on it, takes the ache and puts it away for another time.  _ Look what I made.  _

“Would you like to tell him what you’ve been up to?” George asks, his voice that indulgent, paternal thing that comes out when he’s especially proud. It’s as familiar as the sound of his breathing, now. 

Lawrence inclines his head to the coffee table. “We’re experimenting.”

Alex follows the movement to where his plants sit tucked around the mugs discarded from earlier.

“I thought they might like some company,” Lawrence says, shrugging. “It felt right.” 

Alex hums in agreement and rests his head back against the couch. “Sure, baby. It can’t hurt.” Another two-thirds look. “What?” Alex says. 

George leans forward and grabs a pot off of the coffee table. “Lights?”

Alex stifles a yawn. The room brightens a little. 

“Thank you.” He holds the plant out for Alex to see. Brown and sad and unidentifiable like the rest. Alex slants a brow at him. George huffs, equal amusement and exasperation. “Look,” he says. 

Alex does, a half-glance to confirm what he already knows -- and pauses. 

One tight-curled leaf has gone a little green at the edges, loosened like the prelude to an unfurling.   
  


**Author's Note:**

> *thanks for reading! leave a kudos and comment if you liked it!  
> *find me on tumblr at [icarusandtheson](https://icarusandtheson.tumblr.com/)  
> *inspiration for both the title and this au as a whole come from the movie "practical magic"


End file.
